Sara Correia: “Fado is a real therapy”

Sara Correia (Lisbon, 31 years old) began to play fado houses with her school when she was a child. She was nine years old and had an inner anxiety that she identified with the saddest lyrics. A therapy before being aware of the therapy. Her fado, born from resilience and Chelas, the popular and stigmatized neighborhood where music emerged from the daily struggle, now comes to Madrid (Summum Concert Series, Teatro Bellas Artes, March 4) and Zaragoza (CaixaForum, March 9).

Question: What has Sara Correia brought to fado?

Answer. Fado has many female fado singers who have already contributed a lot. I bring a bit of my wildest side, of my neighbourhood and of my intense way of singing. Fado belongs to everyone, but each fado singer has his or her own fado and way of interpreting it with his or her emotions and personality. I think I have brought the strength and intensity.

Q. The song Chelas tells your story . How many times have you been told to “hide your roots”?

A. Always. The problem with coming from a neighborhood is that they end up hiding us a bit, it seems like we don't belong to society and they tell us that it's difficult to achieve our dreams. I wanted to prove the opposite, that by working hard and loving what I do, we are capable of breaking any idea and stereotype.

Q. Did you have any role models of fadistas from other neighborhoods that served as a reference for you?

A. Almost all the fado singers are popular. Fado is a popular music, born in the street, born out of sadness, born from those who waited for their husbands to return on the ships, born in the alleys.

Q. What did growing up in the Chelas neighborhood give Sara Correia?

A. It was great. If I hadn't grown up in a neighborhood like that, I wouldn't have so much strength, so much ability, or a suitcase full of so many painful things that give me more strength for the journey because this is a very difficult path, full of struggle. The best part of our life as fado singers is when we close our eyes and sing, then we are light, but all the work and pressure we have sometimes complicates our daily life. I think the neighborhood gave me the strength not to give up.

Q. Are there still stigmas in Portugal about neighborhoods like Chelas?

A. It has improved somewhat, but it is a long road. The neighborhoods are also developing and that helps. In mine, for example, a hospital is going to be built. But it is necessary to change mentalities, not within the neighborhood, but outside of it. They should see us as capable because most of those who grew up there have been working since they were eight years old. Our grandparents and parents continue to work, they are humble people. There is everything, I cannot say that there are no bad things in the neighborhood because there are, but that happens everywhere.

Q: You have been singing since you were a child. Did you lose things in your childhood and adolescence because of music or is it more what you have received from it?

A. I think it's a combination of both things. I lost something of my childhood, of being happy, of living the things I had to live for my age...

P. Also, I made adult music.

R. And when I was a child, I only liked the fados that made you cut your wrists, the ones that hurt the most, those were the ones I liked singing the most when I was nine years old. I didn't feel better with happy things. But that also gave me a different strength because, thanks to all those years gone by, I know how to deal better with my sorrows and my difficulties. It's interesting, I think fado helped me a lot with that.

Q. Was fado the first therapy?

R. Great ! Exactly. I think that fado is a real therapy. If I go ten days without singing, I feel that I need to sing urgently, so it is really a therapy. I think that it is when we express ourselves more and we can get out what we sometimes don't want to say to anyone. Fado, music, has this power. Fado has the ability to make me comfortable with my sorrows. And that is great.

Q: You had family difficulties in your childhood. Is it necessary to suffer to be a good fado singer?

A. Yes, yes.

Q. Can a happy person sing fados well?

A. You can, you can, everyone has the right to sing in whatever way they want. But for me it doesn't make much sense for a fado singer who is not able to be comfortable with sadness as he is with joy. Life and death are on a par, we accept death as we accept life, we accept joy as we accept sadness, it is part of us. I manage to sing sad things and extract good things from them. It is my therapy to feel happy afterwards and return to sadness without having problems.

Q. What does fado lose when it leaves the fado house and goes on stage?

A. When we sing in fado houses, we sing in people's ears. We go there to find the energy to then take to the stage where there are lights or applause. It is a different kind of respect. The fado house is our church and then we take that to the rest of the world. The fado house is a whisper, a prayer.

Q. Were you also presented as Amália Rodrigues ' successor?

A. It is part of the tradition. We have all been there. The most common comparison is with Amália, although I think that is wrong. There is only one Amália, there is only one Sara, each fadista is unique.

Q. In an interview you defined yourself as someone who was fond of old things.

A. I had an old soul. Since I was little I always listened to fados and lived with things that people now call vintage. I feel that at my age I don't like things that people my age like.

Q. For example?

A. I hate clubs, I don't like noise. I prefer to be with friends, eat well, drink wine, have low music and be able to hear the people next to me. I'm not much of a crazy person. I prefer to be quiet. I've always been like that. I preferred to be in a fado house with older people than to be with people my age.

Q. Did you face any specific problems as a woman?

R. It seems that women never have the same courage as men. We have to try more. On the other hand, we are stronger, warriors who have to break many things.

Q. When did you start singing in public?

A. When I was nine years old. I started singing at a fado house that no longer exists, Jardim do Pozo Bispo, on weekends. Sometimes I sang and then went to school. In the old days we went in at eight in the evening and left at five or six in the morning. It was crazy, but that's when I learned the most.

Q. He was very precocious.

R. It was good for me, it gave me a lot of knowledge. I have been doing therapy since I was nine years old.